Managing Frontiers in Competitive Intelligence

Managing Frontiers in Competitive Intelligence

Synopsis

For specialists and nonspecialists alike, this perceptive selection of the newest and the up and coming tools and techniques of competitive intelligence picks up where other books leave off, offering a well balanced combination of theory and practice. It shows how advances in computers and technology have accelerated progress in CI management, and the ways in which CI has affected (and been affected by) major business functions and processes. It explores applications to organizations of various sizes and types. Analysts, strategists and organizational decision makers will find the book especially valuable, as they seek to make sense of the business environment and assess their organizations' evolving, dynamic places in it.

Excerpt

As we enter the new millennium, competitive intelligence (CI) has become an important management topic for senior decision-makers. This enhanced status is being fueled by increased global competitiveness characterized by heightened industry consolidation and fragmentation. Decision-makers entrusted with designing strategy for their enterprises in this environment must be more cognizant and vigilant than ever before in recognizing and understanding changing industry contexts, dynamics, and structures. Fortunately, advances in practice and technology have enabled data-gathering and -analysis for decision-making—the primary domain of those in the CI field—to be much easier and cost-effective.

As the discipline of CI grows, so does the research and published literature in the field, which to date is still very much in an emerging mode. Our contribution in this book is to assist in breaking new ground in CI—hence the title Managing Frontiers in Competitive Intelligence. The parts and chapters that follow cut across many dimensions of business practice with new ideas and techniques, opening up for managers new frontiers in competitive intelligence.

By almost any measure, the popularity of CI has continued to grow and interest in the area is high. This growth has been demonstrated in a number of ways. Among other things, there have been large increases in memberships in professional associations dedicated to the field, increased media visibility of the practice, expansion in the number of professional conferences and workshops offered around the globe, new degree and certificate programs being introduced at universities, and improved recognition of the value of CI by corporate senior-deci-sion-makers.

Part One includes several chapters that address the frontiers being carved out by this growth. Managers are struggling with issues of making senior decision-makers aware of the potential value added by CI to the organization’s competitiveness and bottom line despite the difficulty in providing definitive empirical